Looking for examples of games where players choose turn order in a round freely amongst themselves. Not real-time- primarily coops (I assume) where players discuss what their order will be at the start of the round.
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Batman: the Animated series: gotham city under siege allows you to choose the order of who allocates their dice first to better combo or maximise attack
I have this in my Walkable City game. Though it might not count since there are no turns, more like players do their setup and see how much they can each build that round. Then they freely build collaboratively in any order they choose.
Ha, my current prototype has that, and I've been considering other designs that use it.
Kinda. Players have 4 actions a turn, and they decide roughly what order they will take those actions in. But the order will (mostly) serpentine, so in a 4p game, the player with action #1 will have action #8.
Players freely choose what order to execute their powers in Spirit Island after everyone has selected them. This is done power-by-power - so I could do 2 of mine, then you do 1, then I do another to set up one more for you.
Descent Legends of the Dark the heroes freely choose their order each round
The Conan series from Monolith does this. An Overlord runs the bad guys vs 1-4ish players, each controlling a hero. The Overlord is a player as opposed to a DM-style role, and controls a boss character plus a slew of mid- and low-level mugs. The heroes execute their own actions in any agreed order.
Some co-op tactical games feature this, where players decide who does what when, based on the enemy of the moment. I think that harkens back to D&D party management which was pretty free-form. I will try to retrieve a couple specific titles.
I can think of a bunch of TTRPGs that do this. Is that helpful? Cortex Prime (esp. Marvel Heroic) and Mythender are first on my mind, but they're... old now.
In fresco you choose when your workers wake up the next day and that determines player order. It has a bidding mechanic though so not a free for all but some choice is given.
It is intended to follow the same order every turn. Obvs houserule to have fun! But being able to choose order from round to round is an advantage in some scenarios.
In the newer iterations of Aeons End, the turn order is random but in 4p players are paired up. When the 1/2 card comes up, players 1 and 2 decide who will go. Same for 3/4.
They have been mentioned, but Arkham Horror: The Card Game and Darkest Night were the ones that came immediately to mind.
If you hadn't said "discuss" I'd jokingly thrown in The Mind.
Real answer: Adding Spirit Island to the deluge of coop games.
Because of its free-form negotiation nature, Twilight Imperium has the potential but probably not in practice.
Does an auction count as "discussing"? Some games employ that.
Ghostbusters Blackout. A great game in my opinion, but you always play all four characters and execute them in any order, regardless of player count, so it’s got one foot into being a solo game.
For competitive games, the key will be finding a way to resolve a stalemate. "Freely" deciding who goes first will eventually need to either come down to 1 player's choice, or some random element.
My only experience w/that is prototypes I've played, including my own, where after a short time it became clear that picking the action order is more time consuming than fun.
Who should go first is usually a no-brainer/non-decision, or doesn't matter. But still needs to be discussed. Every turn.
You might be able to make it work as a core mechanic, "no, after you;" or team push-your-luck.
But even then I think you'd need to splash in output randomness (like the events in Spirit Island coming between Fast and Slow) to prevent every turn from grinding down into a solvable optimization puzzle.
Atlantis Rising. Everyone freely places their workers in any order they like, an event card happens, then they pick player order to resolve selected actions.
In the 3 player mode of Tiny Epic Defenders, there is a card in the deck that gives your team 3 action points to spend as you choose in the order of your choice among all of the players.
That's the closest I've got off hand. You're looking for non-cooperative games though?
Kind of related A Game of Thrones 2nd edition board has a bidding track specifically for turn order. When we bid for it, I generally tended to opt to go later on in order to see what my opponents did. Other players would specifically try bid high to go first.
The Arkham Horror card game does this! Once an investigator starts their turn they must take all three of their actions, but the investigators can go in any order
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Kinda. Players have 4 actions a turn, and they decide roughly what order they will take those actions in. But the order will (mostly) serpentine, so in a 4p game, the player with action #1 will have action #8.
I'm also toying around with a design where there are 7 possible actions, and players each plan out 5 to take in whatever order they want.
Not sure if this meets what you're looking for?
Descent Legends of the Dark the heroes freely choose their order each round
They have been mentioned, but Arkham Horror: The Card Game and Darkest Night were the ones that came immediately to mind.
Real answer: Adding Spirit Island to the deluge of coop games.
Because of its free-form negotiation nature, Twilight Imperium has the potential but probably not in practice.
Does an auction count as "discussing"? Some games employ that.
Translating to a competitive game, perhaps there could be some kind of bluffing element to this.
Alternatively, it could be an open negotiation with a cost involved.
Who should go first is usually a no-brainer/non-decision, or doesn't matter. But still needs to be discussed. Every turn.
But even then I think you'd need to splash in output randomness (like the events in Spirit Island coming between Fast and Slow) to prevent every turn from grinding down into a solvable optimization puzzle.
That's the closest I've got off hand. You're looking for non-cooperative games though?
In Daybreak stuff can happen in any order, or simultaneously
Spirit Island, actions can go in any order